ICP and Ringling College
Since 2009, students at Ringling College of Art and Design (Sarasota, Florida) have had the opportunity to study for one year in the Creative Practices and Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism certificate programs at the International Center of Photography before returning to Ringling to complete their BFAs in Photography and Imaging. This exhibition features alumni of this partnership, artists who, even though most never actually studied together, forged a special bond that is visible in their current work.
About the Exhibition
Identity is a fundamental catch-22: it is everything we are and anything we are not. It is what you think of yourself and all you hope you will never be. It is contained by things over which you have no control, and built on every choice you make. It is every cause you embrace, every label you reject, and, as paradoxes go, it is airtight and fail-safe. For even when you forsake a concept such as identity politics, are you not still fully engaged in the politics of identity?
The works in Signs from the Interior explore how photography figures both in the construction, deconstruction, and contradiction of who we are as well as how we display who we are to each other. We have all seen a zillion selfies in which friends and acquaintances radiate with the high-octane confidence of movie stars. Yet what if people were to present themselves in a more vulnerable state? Would they not be projecting a stronger degree of self-possession? What if they chose to obscure or manipulate their own appearance? Would they be hiding behind something or seeking a deeper truth?
Identity is not limited to self-portraiture, of course. A photograph of something can say all you need to know about someone, just as a picture of one person can provide a detailed account of somebody else. Photography, like identity, is its own paradox. No matter where you point a camera, it is always aiming back at you.
— Smith Galtney, ICP Alum, Creative Practices, 2014
Artists
Karen Arango, Bill Ellis, Angie Garcia, Miles Goscha, Mariana Greif, Kathryn Harrison, Rachel Kuzma, Rebecca Morrello, Charles Robbins, Alyson Smith, Athena Torri
Curator
Kathryn Harrison
Hours & Admission
10 AM–6 PM
ICP School, 1114 Avenue of the Americas
Free of charge
Join us for an opening reception of the exhibition on Friday, January 25 from 6 to 8 PM.
